Pages

Thursday, November 29, 2012

Hula Hoop Rug

I've completed my first recycled t-shirt rug, a circular rug which is woven out of strips of old t-shirts, with a hula hoop used as a template. The tutorial can be found here. This is mine:

Its a fun project, and looks effective, but there are a couple of discoveries on completion:

1. You need a lot of time to complete a rug, my weaving consumed most of my two day weekend.
2. You need a lot of patience, it becomes tedious.
3. The further down you get, the less neat, you have to pull your weave through a bit tighter toward the end.
4. I started tying knots to attach each strip of t-shirt to the next. Knots can look quite bulky, so I quickly changed tactic, and used a needle and thread to sew the next strip onto the previous, before weaving through.
5. You don't need to use t-shirts, you can use fabric scraps, but jersey fabric works best as it doesn't fray.
6. I believe you can get larger hula hoops that I did, which will leave you with a bigger rug. Mine will be big enough as a large table centerpiece, or perhaps a bath mat, but it would not be big enough as a rug for a lounge room.

very creative use of tshirts, have you tried crocheting with a big hook, you can make rugs, baskets etc. hey and thanks for joining my site recently, I am honored and hope I can keep you coming back with more of my 4Rs ideas! till then, keep up the great stuff!

I saw this on Pinterest! Thanks for listing out all of your "discoveries". That's helpful for decided when and if to make one myself! Yours is really cute though. I also saw a similar rug that was made by cutting long strips of clothing and braiding them together and then sewing together in a circle. I was debating on which version to try. :)~Jen